AJBlogs Posted:
Contrarian Musings: Why Folk Art Museum’s Building Should Not Be Saved (with slideshow)
Source: CultureGrrl | Published on 2014-01-10
Solving Field-wide Problems Together
Source: Field Notes | Published on 2014-01-10
Amiri Baraka Has Died, a Remembrance
Source: Straight|Up | Published on 2014-01-10
How Spotify killed off paid downloads
Source: Slipped Disc | Published on 2014-01-10
German Legislature May Move On Nazi Loot
Source: Real Clear Arts | Published on 2014-01-10
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IDEAS Posted:
As more than a decade’s research is showing, genius and madness are basically best friends. What’s interesting is why.
MUSIC Posted:
“Laura Kaminsky increased the space’s new music programming significantly, helping to make it competitive with the Miller Theater at Columbia University, which had a long tradition of new-music presentation, as well as with relative upstarts like Le Poisson Rouge, which opened in 2008 and has become an important space for independent classical music, rock and jazz.”
MEDIA Posted:
“By the start of 2017, the Cinema Fund would have doubled the size of its current budget of 3 billion rubles ($90.3 million), with half coming from the state and the other half from recoupments.”
DANCE Posted:
“Gibney Dance has seven studios stretching over 15,000 square feet that it rents out to dance companies, Broadway shows or anyone in need of arts-related space. By adding the downtown facility, Gibney Dance will more than double its operations—and it’s not just empire-building.”
MEDIA Posted:
“A number of studies have found people feel worse after scrolling Facebook – more envious, lonely, even angry. In one German study, people were particularly unhappy after viewing vacation photos. They were also more envious when browsing Facebook instead of actively using it by posting comments and photos of themselves.”
PEOPLE Posted:
Before this phone call, it had never occurred to Toni Kirkpatrick that her contest winner might have spent the past 25 years in prison, where he’s serving a life sentence for murder.
WORDS Posted:
“In a contemporary, literary twist on old homesteading incentives, a new nonprofit organization called Write a House is refurbishing three two-bedroom houses in Detroit and accepting applications this spring for writers to move in, rent free. Poets, journalists, novelists, and anyone who falls somewhere in between are encouraged to apply.”
VISUAL Posted:
How did this happen? Glenn Brown basically reimagined Chris Foss’ work — although it looks as though all he did was repaint it, and fool around with the colors slightly.
ISSUES Posted:
“The main difference between dilettantes and the dedicated is that the former will often find themselves unable to exercise the degree of control necessary to achieve the desired result.”
PEOPLE Posted:
Drabinsky had been stripped of his Order of Canada medal. A federal court judge found “no basis” for allowing Drabinsky a judicial review to look into the governor general’s 2012 decision to rescind the medal.
THEATRE Posted:
NT Live is a “fantastic thing” in allowing people to access shows they might not be able to otherwise see and the screenings are cheaper than a trip to London to see a play. “But it is not the same experience as being in the theatre.”
THEATRE Posted:
“Fine dramatic architecture does not require transferability to the screen. A camera does not shed a scorching light on the “bald spots” of theatrical writing. The two media are fundamentally different.”
WORDS Posted:
“The Library of Congress staff tried to figure out some way to address the Park Service’s concerns, but ultimately, no feasible compromise was reached. More than 200,000 people attended last year’s two-day literary event.”
VISUAL Posted:
From global expansion to artist collaboration to increased curiosity about Central and South America, the American museum world is opening up.
ISSUES Posted:
Governor Jerry Brown’s budget plan calls for “an overall 8.5% spending increase, including major boosts to education, but envisions a $9,000 cut for the state’s arts-grant agency, the California Arts Council — from a projected $5.058 million in the current fiscal year to $5.049 million in the 2014-15 budget year that begins July 1.”
VISUAL Posted:
Tearing down New York’s Folk Art Museum: “Mine is not necessarily a view that everyone can accept: to many observers, the Folk Art building seems, like all too many museums these days, to be a grand-scale sculpture that fails to showcase the art it was built to house. But if that is MoMA’s opinion, then it should say so, which could help stimulate a worthwhile public discussion on the aesthetic of architecture.”
VISUAL Posted:
“The architects who are designing this destructive expansion — Diller Scofidio + Renfro — understand perfectly what they’re doing, and it causes them genuine grief.”
VISUAL Posted:
“Somewhere inside me, I heard myself saying my good-byes to MoMA. I thought, I have seen the best modern museum of my generation destroyed by madness.”
PEOPLE Posted:
“One of the most influential African American writers of his generation, [he] courted controversy as a poet, playwright and provocateur and who was a primary intellectual architect of the Black Arts movement of the 1960s.”
ISSUES Posted:
If only this were a joke … (Egypt’s internet wags are making fun of the affair in high style, at least.)
PEOPLE Posted:
Alaa Al-Aswany (The Yacoubian Building) was a strong opponent of the Mubarak regime and champion of the Arab Spring, and he cheered his homeland’s first democratic elections. A year later, he cheered the military’s overthrow of Presdient Morsi and the elected Muslim Brotherhood government – and most of Egypt’s intelligentsia (and a quite a lot of the public) cheered right along with him. What happened?
THEATRE Posted:
The double-bill of Twelfth Night and Richard III has now earned back its $3.1 million capitalization – by no means a sure thing on Broadway, even for critically-acclaimed Shakespeare productions.
MEDIA Posted:
The new animated blockbuster Frozen subverts the fairy tale idea of a handsome, noble, chivalrous suitor by making him the surprise villain of the story. The gambit presumes, of course, that the Prince Charming myth needs debunking. On the contrary, argues Akash Nikolas, that myth serves some very useful and healthy purposes.
MEDIA Posted:
You know the Bechdel Test: “Do you, movie, feature two or more named women? Do they talk to each other? About something besides a guy?” But Katy Waldman observes, “In 2014, we are still whooping with delight when movie studios depict a woman sharing a snippet of non-dude-focused conversation with another woman? This is not exactly a high bar.” And several other writers weigh in on how they might update the Test.
PEOPLE Posted:
Since their release, Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova have begun using their new-found fame, connections and energy for the cause of prison reform. Masha Gessen describes the horrific conditions they faced in their penal colonies and explains why this new work could have far more resonance within Russia than singing about Putin in a Moscow cathedral did.
VISUAL Posted:
Natalia Goncharova and her husband left Russia in 1915 to work with Diaghilev; after the Revolution, they never went back. With a big retrospective at the Tretyakov Gallery, art lovers in Goncharova’s homeland and beyond are getting a fresh look at her work.
THEATRE Posted:
“He is planning to set up a new concern with the National’s executive director Nick Starr when the pair leave in 2015.”
MEDIA Posted:
“How much longer can Hollywood claim to be the movie capital of the world? Can the California Legislature reverse the slide of film production away from Los Angeles simply by enhancing tax credits for the movie and television industry or, one day, will the Oscars be presented in Atlanta or Toronto or New Orleans?”
ISSUES Posted:
“Stanford has been the catalyst of the Silicon Valley revolution, and we want to have the same effect on the arts. The Bay Area has the human and material resources needed to become the Florence of the 21st century.”